Forest Oil Corp. said today that it has begun production at its Redoubt Shoal field in Cook Inlet. The field, which began producing Dec. 9, is currently producing in excess of 4,200 barrels of oil per day from two of the four wells capable of production.

Forest said production is expected to be maintained near this rate until new onshore production facilities at Kustatan are completed. Current production is flowing to Forest-owned facilities at the company's West McArthur River field. After completion work is finalized on the other two wells in the field Forest will resume drilling activity. The company received a drilling permit for the Redoubt Shoal No. 6 development well Dec. 13 from the Alaska Oil and Gas Conservation Commission.

"This is a significant milestone in the development of the Redoubt Shoal discovery," Robert Boswell, Forest's chairman and CEO, said in a statement. "The discovery and development of Redoubt Shoal in 22 months was a great accomplishment by our team in Alaska. The project demonstrates that large oil fields can be found in North America that are not deepwater related.

"We believe that Redoubt Shoal will have lower finding and development costs and a shorter development schedule than deepwater or international projects of similar size," he said.

Boswell also said that Forest will be doing further exploration on oil and gas prospects "in and around Cook Inlet where we are now the largest oil producer and currently own one of the largest lease acreage positions."